CERN: “Don’t interpret the CLOUD experiment results”

From the Register and Nigel Calder’s blog via bunches of people who submitted in Tips and Notes, hints of a new project, the RCC (Real Climate Collider) /sarc.

CERN ‘gags’ physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

What do these results mean? Not allowed to tell you

The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.

CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.

“I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?

Because, Heuer says, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”

===========================================================
Calder writes on his blog:

Four quick inferences:

1) The results must be favourable for Svensmark or there would be no such anxiety about them.

2) CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain politically correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis. It’s OK to enter “the highly political arena of the climate change debate” provided your results endorse man-made warming, but not if they support Svensmark’s heresy that the Sun alters the climate by influencing the cosmic ray influx and cloud formation.

3) The once illustrious CERN laboratory ceases to be a truly scientific institute when its Director General forbids its physicists and visiting experimenters to draw the obvious scientific conclusions from their results.

N. Calder says, “1) The results must be favourable for Svensmark or there would be no such anxiety about them.”

Rolf-Dieter Heuer says, “The results will be published shortly. I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”

– – – – – – – –

I do not see Calder’s conclusion follow from Heuer’s statement unless we invoke a deep cynicism; a cynicis that is likely to be counterproductive on healthy skepticism. We could just wait for the CERN results to be published shortly.

That said, Nigel Calder’s statement could force a more clear statement from Heuer about his full meaning. That would be helpful.

Just like all the other elite non-science organizations, they are licking their chops for the money they can milk through their mantra that mankind is the root of all climate “events.” Another group of folks who make me puke. Pardon the graphic reaction.

It seems to me, as an outsider of these groups, it would be easy eliminate such organized corruption by supporting them. Who needs them? Where do they get their platform to spouse such junk? Why are they so visible in the media? If 33,000 other scientists sign a petition against the premise of man made global disaster causing CO2, why are any scholars providing support to organizations such as CERM? Almost rhymes with germ.

Do stand out from the clutter of online viewing, is there a notable and noble publication or organization that stands a chance at getting non-political science out to the public?

The obvious conclusions…should they be obvious…will be posted to blogs like this one for all to see. Whether the physicists can talk about it or not.

Marvin Gellar (noted AGW commentator and professor at my institution – Stony Brook University) – published a review paper with a number of colleagues on solar climate variability as we knew it back in 2009. He didn’t cover any cumulative impacts of solar variability, but he did show rather convincingly that sunspot cycles appeared to be linked to cloud cover amongst other things. A quick Google Scholar search will find that paper if you are curious what it actually contained.

I think at this point it’s pretty clear that solar climate variability is significant to cyclical patterns of warming and cooling on decadal time scales. Hopefully the CLOUD project will help us make that better accepted.

“That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate.”

What?! So there IS a climate change debate after all?? But hey, Al said there isn’t! And just recently, after a long and courageous denial of a pause in global temperature rise, they are now explaining WHY there is this (non existent) pause in the temperature rise. Anthropogenic global pause of anthropogenic global warming… As soon as Wallis the hitman of Outside Organisation is arrested they can’t stay on message any more.
Oh dear dear, who and what am I now to beleive?

Never, ever let the scientific facts get in the way of your personal career.
/Sarc
This is a perfect example of why some scientists are every day looking more and more like shylock attorneys. Herein it’s not about the truth. It’s never been about the truth to some. It’s all about keeping your job.

Perhaps Boss Heuer’s intentions are to prevent CERN from becoming involved in the kerfuffle of global warming, climate disruption, climate change, or bi-polar climate syndrome. Several organization in the USA have lost respect because they have made their interpretations of unsettled science support a “green” agenda. There is no good reason for CERN to become involved. Asking the researchers to present their findings without delving into the politically charged issue of rearranging the developed nation’s economies seems prudent.

Compare, for instance, the USA’s census activities that show increasing numbers of “Hispanic” folks in the country. The researchers of the Census Bureau can report the numbers without involving themselves in the establishment of policies for the border of Arizona and Mexico. After every census there is criticism of under-counting because Congress, in its collective wisdom, has directed dollars to follow the numbers. Sometimes a few thousand more folks in a census area means a few hundred thousand more dollars (per year) flowing into the local budget. The census statisticians generally stay out of this mess.

There will be much more going on at CERN that I haven’t a clue about but if the boss is just trying to keep the scientists above the fray, so to speak, I don’t think that is a problem. He hasn’t asked that they not report their findings – has he?

Translation:
Welt Online: Antimatter is surrounded by an aura of mystery, though, with scenes for the movie “Illuminati” , based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown, being filmed at Cern. Are you happy with the additional attention brought to Cern by this means?

Heuer: Totally. I find this sort of thing good, as long as the line dividing reality from fiction is reasonably clear. That movie has definitely done Cern no harm, and has in fact boosted attention on research into antimatter. And it has enabled us to move from the science pages of newspapers into the feature sections. That of course applies just as much to the subject of the LHC.

The CLOUD experiment was allowed to go forward for the expressed political purpose of putting an end to Svensmark’s theory of droplet formation. Now that the results have been tabulated, there is mild panic that the outcome is the exact opposite of what was anticipated. One can only conclude that the moratorium on interpretation is necessary to provide some breathing room while the powers that be formulate their political response to purely scientific results.

To use an American football metaphor, my take is that Heuer has merely asked his colleagues working on the CLOUD team to refrain from spiking the ball in the endzone and doing a little victory dance to rub it in.

Actually guys and gals, this is a step in the right direction. I don’t want political advocates masquerading as scientists to interpret anything for me. I’ll do it myself if I have to, or take the data to someone credible and ask for their interpretation. Then judge if the interpretation is credible or not. Just like Dragnet, “Just the facts.” That is all that is required, that is all that is desired.

Professor Nahle of Monterrey, Mexico backed by a team of international scientists has faithfully recreated a famous experiment from 1909 to confirm that the greenhouse effect cannot cause global warming.

Astonishingly, the 1909 greenhouse gas experiment first performed by Professor Robert W. Wood at John Hopkins University hadn’t been replicated for a century. This despite over $100 billion spent by the man-made global warming industry trying to prove its case that carbon dioxide is a dangerous atmospheric pollutant.

The analogy had been that greenhouse gases (e.g. CO2) act like the glass in a greenhouse trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere and if they build up (due to human industrial emissions) the planet would dangerously overheat.

The link to the original German story is now a story about antimatter – no reference to the cloud study at all. Perhaps the link is in error…this is the Google translation of the link mentioned in the article.

This is absolutely scandalous and unacceptable. Blogging is not doing anything. Write to the German/EU government and ask that this man be fired for attempted fraud/deception etc. Totally unfit for the job

I can’t see the problem. CERN is not involved in climatology, and if it interpreted the results then it would be accused of partisanship and, quite possibly, incompetence. And why would we want the results ‘interpreted’? Isn’t that what ‘hide the decline’ is all about?

Let’s just have the clear presentation of the results we’re promised. I for one don’t want to see an ‘interpreted’ version of the CERN results, just the results please, presented clearly. So I applaud the approach taken by Rolf-Dieter Heuer in wanting to give us the results, but not wanting his staff to get involved in issues and interpretations that would risk CERN’s reputation.

All data ends up getting interpreted, so let’s just have the results so that we can detect whether someone’s interpretation is plausible.

If they didn’t want to get involved in the cAGW debate, why did they perform the experiment in the first place? It seems inherent that an experiment attempting to explore the relationship between GCRs and cloud formation would have obvious cAGW overtones.

I think they didn’t expect for the experiment to come out in the ‘deniers’ favor….funny how those pesky preconceived notions can ruin a good experiment!

@John Whitman
> I do not see Calder’s conclusion follow from Heuer’s statement
> unless we invoke a deep cynicism; a cynicis[m] that is likely to be
> counterproductive on healthy skepticism.

That’s a bit harsh. A cynic is someone who has a negative attitude for the sake of having a negative attitude. I don’t think you need any negativity at all to see the implications in Heuer’s words, just a bit of healthy skepticism.

The words Heuer used per se are harmless, but their implications are not hard to see. Here, let me translate for you:“That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate.”
Why would they fuel debate? There would be no “debate” if the results supported the AGW/CAGW hypotheses. This certainly hints that the results (whatever they are) appear to stir the debate up a bit, in the “wrong” direction.

“One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”
Again, a strong hint that the results are pointing in the “wrong” direction. Why not say the same about the CO2 record? Surely a rising CO2 level is only “one of many parameters”, so let’s not draw any hasty conclusions about rising CO2 levels, shall we?

That is OK. If the high priests of so-called “science” are forbidden to think and interpret data, then we crowd-sourced actual scientists will do it for them. That is, if they don’t conceal the data in clay jars in a cave somewhere.

Science…has become perverted by activists. CERN is not immune to activism.

I really don’t read it that way. What I see is a quite sensible attempt to keep CERN scientific, rather than enter the unscientific/anti-science political quagmire which is the Church of Global Warming. The advice/request/instruction (choose your favourite) to refrain from commenting on the impact or otherwise on Global Warming is simply an attempt to keep CERN’s hands clean. In any case, these guys aren’t climatologists: they are real scientists. We should applaud this attempt to keep things that way.

I’ll be more interested to learn what the results are: do we know when they will be published?. And am I right to conclude that it’s unlikely to “prove” Svensmark’s theory, but it could either partially support, or completely falsify it?

Paleoclimate data show that the Earth’s climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the “albedo flip” property of water substance, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A climate forcing that “flips” the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice sheet can spark a cataclysm. Ice sheet and ocean inertia provides only moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the largest human-made climate forcing, but other trace constituents are important. Only intense simultaneous efforts to slow CO2 emissions and reduce non-CO2 forcings can keep climate within or near the range of the past million years. The most important of the non-CO2 forcings is methane (CH4), as it causes the 2nd largest human-made GHG climate forcing and is the principal cause of increased tropospheric ozone (O3), which is the 3rd largest GHG forcing. Nitrous oxide (N2O) should also be a focus of climate mitigation efforts. Black carbon (“black soot”) has a high global warming potential (~2000, 500, and 200 for 20, 100 and 500 years, respectively) and deserves greater attention. Some forcings are especially effective at high latitudes, so concerted efforts to reduce their emissions could still “save the Arctic”, while also having major benefits for human health, agricultural productivity, and the global environment.

—

Yep. Straight-up science there…And this was published back when Hansen and his gang were being “muzzled” by the Bush Administration [LOL!!!].

Please, having worked with CERN as a member of an external group taking part in experiments for over 30 years and having spent about 7 of those years in CERN , and sat in various decision making committees, I can assure you that the Director General of CERN has no control on what the groups publish in any way.

Even if he could “advise” the groups under him on how to publish and comment on results, he has absolutely no power over the individual groups taking part in the experiments from universities and research institutes the world over. The collaborations decide what and how they interpret and publish results If ( and I doubt he could do it) he does not allow a research result to go out as a CERN preprint, there are all the other groups involved that have the data and can publish them.

I do not see Calder’s conclusion follow from Heuer’s statement unless we invoke a deep cynicism; a cynicis[m] that is likely to be counterproductive on healthy skepticism.

“”””That’s a bit harsh. A cynic is someone who has a negative attitude for the sake of having a negative attitude. I don’t think you need any negativity at all to see the implications in Heuer’s words, just a bit of healthy skepticism. “”””

—————-

John Day,

Thanks for your reply.

Speaking, hmmmm, John-to-John it is just that I am concerned with what seems to be a default negative view of virtually all postings on many blogs populated mostly by skeptics (I prefer to call them independents). Therefore, my statement about cynicism being unhealthy. Unhealthy if it is a default setting on our comment response mode selector.

NOTE: Likewise, I find cynicism rampant of blogs focused on supporting IPCC so-called consensus climate science. So, it makes me uncomfortable to act like them . . . we can be better?

So, essentially, the CLOUDs didn’t go their preferred catastrophic anthropogenic global warming way, so now they don’t want to speak about it, but please send more money to afford to get the research just “right”.

I’m not overly concerned by this revelation. I’m quite happy to accept that these CERN scientists are probably good experimentallists, and know how to fire particles at water vapor laden pseudo atmospheres, and record, whatever the heck they think they observed..
I’m also happy to accept that they can probably write up their results so that other scientists and even us lay folks can read and understand what they observed.
That to me gives no inference that these researchers, are necessarily the best persons to interpret for the theoretical community, the meaning of their observation results.

So let’s not all panic. Tell us what you found, and maybe some of us, can even decide for ourselves what WE think YOUR observations mean.

So nothing to see here folks, so move along now. And get a move on in getting those experimental reults out where WE can see what YOU observed

I really hope that this quote is just a mis-translation of idiomatic German – or something.

Why do an experiment ?
To test a hypothesis

What do you do with the results of the experiment ?
Interpret them in terms of what the experiment was supposed to test (ie agrees with the theory/disagrees with the theory)

What do you do with the interpretation of the results ?
Modify the theory so it better describes the real world.

The result HAVE to be interpreted otherwise the experiment is a waste of time and money – and since I have been forced to become a ‘citizen’ of the EUSSR; rather than remaining a subject of the nation of my birth I object to the waste of my tax £

Or do I mis-understand the whole damn purpose of making an experiment ?

It’s probably true that the results support Svensmark, but even if they didn’t it’s wise for an organisation of experimental physicists to provide the data to those that can interpret it rather than have either side of this slanging match saying you don’t have the expertise to say what the effects of the data you’ve collected will have on the climate.

The CERN experimental confirmation of ion mediated cloud nucleation is not surprising as there are roughly a hundred different papers supporting the hypothesis that the ice epoch (tens of million year periods when the planet moves into an ice house), decade, centennial, and millennial climate change are caused all caused mechanisms that modulate GCR and ions in the earth’s atmosphere.

The next shoe to drop will be falling planetary temperature due to the solar cycle 24 Dalton or Maunder like minimum. There is a physical reason for the delay in cooling. There is observational evidence the cooling has started. There was roughly a 12 year delay in planetary cooling following the Maunder minimum.

We find that at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy. Assuming that the entire residual variance in temperature is due solely to the CO2 greenhouse effect, we propose a tentative upper limit to the long-term “equilibrium” warming effect of CO2, one which is potentially lower than that based on general circulation models.

RECONSTRUCTING COSMIC RAY FLUXES —The starting point of SV03 is a reconstruction of cosmic ray fluxes over the past 1,000 Myr based on 50 iron meteorites and a simple model estimating cosmic ray flux (CRF) induced by the Earth’s passage through Galactic spiral arms ([Shaviv, 2002; Shaviv, 2003]). About 20 of the meteorites, making four clusters, date from the past 520 Myr, the time span analysed in SV03. The meteorites are dated by analysing isotopic changes in their matter due to cosmic ray exposure (CRE dating [Eugster, 2003]). An apparent age clustering of these meteorites is then interpreted not as a collision-related clustering in their real ages but as an indication of fluctuations in cosmic ray flux (CRF). One difficulty with this interpretation is that variations in CRF intensity would equally affect all types of meteorites. Instead, the ages of different types of iron meteorites cluster at different times [Wieler, 2002]. Hence, most specialists on meteorite CRE ages interpret the clusters as the result of collision processes of parent bodies, as they do for stony meteorites (ages _ 130 Myr) to
which more than one dating method can be applied.

( 1 ) The galactic cosmic ray intensity near earth has been one of the lowest in the past 1150 years.

( 2 ) The frequency of occurrence of large solar particle events has been low compared to the long term average.

For A Period Similar To 1889 – 1901

( 3 ) The galactic cosmic ray intensity was higher compared to the modern era by factors of:

– 7.0 AT 100 MeV
– 3.5 AT 300 MeV
– 2.25 AT 1.0 GeV.

There are a number of paleoclimatic papers that note there is correlation with C14 and other cosmogenic isotopes changes gradual and abrupt climatic change. For example Gerald Bond’s Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene.

…The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production rates of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium-10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. A solar forcing mechanism therefore may underlie at least the Holocene segment of the North Atlantic’s 1500-year cycle…

Another example is this paper which discusses the cause of the Younger Dryas abrupt climatic change which interrupted the current Holocene interglacial returning the planet back to the glacial phase.

“Reduced solar activity as a trigger for the start of the Younger Dryas?”

“Estimates for the start of the YD all demonstrate a strong and rapid rise of C14 (Cosmogenic isotope that increases when there is decreased solar activity that hence allows increased galactic cosmic rays GCR to strike and interact with the atmosphere.) This change is the largest increase of atmospheric C14 known from the late glacial period and Holocene records.”

Thank you for your insight. I always enjoy your comments. I would add one thing: when the boss “advises” those under him, the understanding is implicit that ignoring his advice could affect their job security.

Oh yawn. It won’t matter in the least. Once the results are out, others will write their own journal papers around them, citing them for authority. And surely the press and blogs will go to town.

Since CERN isn’t really full of climate scientists anyway, in fact it is probably better to let others do the analysis, because to do it well will require integrating those results into other data sets that the CERN folks are not nearly so expert at.

Sven says:
July 18, 2011 at 9:09 am
““That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate.””

“What?! So there IS a climate change debate after all?? But hey, Al said there isn’t! And just recently, after a long and courageous denial of a pause in global temperature rise, they are now explaining WHY there is this (non existent) pause in the temperature rise. Anthropogenic global pause of anthropogenic global warming… As soon as Wallis the hitman of Outside Organisation is arrested they can’t stay on message any more.
Oh dear dear, who and what am I now to beleive?”

I do not believe any of these cowardly scientists would be concerned about the “political arena” if the results could support the AGW fanatics. Strange to see this even taken into consideration.

Just like all the other elite non-science organizations, they are licking their chops for the money they can milk through their mantra that mankind is the root of all climate “events.”
…
If 33,000 other scientists sign a petition against the premise of man made global disaster causing CO2, why are any scholars providing support to organizations such as CERM?

Shooting from the lip there, Gary. CERN (not CERM) is “… an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the Northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border (46°14′3″N 6°3′19″E﻿ / ﻿46.23417°N 6.05528°E﻿ / 46.23417; 6.05528). Established in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.

The term “CERN” is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2,400 full-time employees/workers, as well as some 7,931 scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.

CERN’s main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them.” Wikipedia.

It was induced, after years of trying, to perform the ‘CLOUD’ experiments testing Svensmark’s hypothesis. It is about as far from an AGW-promoting group as you can get — pure physics. That’s why many here, like Calder, suspect heavy pressure has been brought to bear to keep it from endorsing Svensmark too explicitly.

CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain politically correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis.

I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. It is plainly obvious that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer see the AGW debate as a source of dispute. CERN has no dog in this AGW fight, and doesn’t want to gain any enemies over somebody else’s fight. Clearly, many politicians of many nations are fully invested in AGW, and CERN doesn’t want to see it’s funding, that comes from members Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, compromised.

””I could do without recommendations of people defining, a priori, the Great Divide between “healthy skepticism” and “deep cynicism.”

History shows that even “deep cynicism” is usually not deep enough to describe the cynicism of Academia mountebanks who make good living off ignorance and superstition.””

– – – – – –

Alexander Feht,

Hey, Alexander, I represent your remark. : )

Having had, since at university 40yrs ago for an engineering degree, only an interaction with scientists and engineers involved in industry then I have not developed a much of a taste of a cynical view of academia.

But I am willing to taste/lick the [my words] ‘hairy underbelly’ of cynicism associated with the academic arena. Lead on.

All data ends up getting interpreted, so let’s just have the results so that we can detect whether someone’s interpretation is plausible.

ScientistForTruth is absolutely right. The only thing the experimenters should do is honestly report the results of their experiment with enough details that someone else can replicate those results (or not). Anything more is bull crap.

I agree with Freeman Dyson that our understanding of the climate is weak. People on both sides of the debate are claiming an expertise well beyond what they actually have. Once they go out on a limb, their arguments are easily refuted.

The experiment’s results, by themselves, will be robust. That’s what we need. Any possible interpretation by the experimenters can only hurt the credibility of the experiment as a whole. The interpretation should be left to others (there will be no shortage).

As a (now non-practising) nuclear physicist, I am confident that CERN will have the results published as cleanly as possible – along the lines of ” x flux of quasi-cosmic rays produces y density of precipitating nuclei” .

What they won’t do is the red-top headlines “Svensmark for the Nobel” or “Svensmark for the Bastille”. Happily. Given the data, others can interpret.

Ed says:
July 18, 2011 at 9:40 am
They are, apparently, hinting that they will release the underlying data without interpretation.
That seems better than the standard practice of releasing interpretations while hiding the data.

…
It was induced, after years of trying, to perform the ‘CLOUD’ experiments testing Svensmark’s hypothesis. It is about as far from an AGW-promoting group as you can get — pure physics. That’s why many here, like Calder, suspect heavy pressure has been brought to bear to keep it from endorsing Svensmark too explicitly.

Of course; I completely agree. Never should a top-notch scientific laboratory underscore the results of an experiment as truth. A simple report of the results is asking way too much! /sarc off.

“I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. It is plainly obvious that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer see the AGW debate as a source of dispute. CERN has no dog in this AGW fight, and doesn’t want to gain any enemies … CERN doesn’t want to see it’s funding … compromised.”

He is saying it is a parameter. Although I see a fair amount of support for the “edict” by people I respect (plus a few trolls), it is an “order” that could only come out of the new era of post normal science. One would never have heard such an order in the golden age unless it came from the church. Lets face it: the question being investigated more-or-less, is- are GCRs important cloud formers. I suppose one can say the data itself is enough. We all know what effect a cloud has when it passes over us on a hot day.

The CERN Physicists probably haven’t done all the background research to adequately interpret the results. And even if they have: there are some really rabid “enthusiasts” on both sides of the debate. Whatever interpretation you give will generate anger from one side or the other. Who wants to be in the middle of that?

The atmosphere is most assuredly not encapsulated by glass. Dog in car analogy comes to mind.
AGW is an epicyclic hypothesis, being encapsulated in mythological glass.
So, this is really about how much CRF makes how much cloud.

Switzerland and all other european countries give a lot of money to the CERN. Without this money the CERN is dead.
European and swiss politics are driven by ‘greens’. Media continues to talk about global warming (they still not have evolved in to climate change).

Conclusion : How can the CERN say that Svensmark is right ? That means IPCC report AR4 is wrong and the computer models are wrong as well (even without that they are wrong !).
Politics will not accept to be ridiculous. They will try to manipulate the message to find the way to continue to be right all the time … but this will take … time.

Ed says:
July 18, 2011 at 9:40 am
They are, apparently, hinting that they will release the underlying data without interpretation.
That seems better than the standard practice of releasing interpretations while hiding the data.

“I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?

Because, Heuer says, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”
*******************************
The original German is better translated as “only one of very many parameters” (“nur um einen von sehr vielen Parametern”). Seems like strong words to me.

I’m with CERN on this one. I’m not convinced we understand the atmosphere well enough to reproduce its full conditions in a lab. There is enough complexity which we do not understand that what may cause an effect in a lab-experiment may have little, no, or opposite effect in nature.
The problem with interpreting inconclusive results is that it would put CERN on one side or the other of climate politics. Any interpretation, no matter how couched in terms of inconclusive results, will be interpreted by policy-makers as supporting one side or the other because they do not seem to understand the concept of uncertainty in science. Being the site of the largest scientific collaboration in history (in terms of Principal Investigators), whichever way things go that would be likely to alienate someone important there.

As I see it, they should simply report whether or not the introduction of simulated cosmic rays induced nucleation in the simulated atmosphere chamber and to quantify how much nucleation was observed. They don’t need to say a thing (and definitely shouldn’t say anything) about effects on global climate, as that is not what they are testing. Once we have sufficient data on the quantity of nucleation due to GCRs (among hundreds of other causes of cloud formation), then climate science can update some of the climate models to incorporate cloud effects. The water cycle is the wildcard in all these studies, and personally I don’t see that any of the models adequately (or even at all) accounting for this major energy transport mechanism. With that said, CERN’s experiment only sheds light on GCR induced nucleation and hopefully collected data from enough starting conditions for others to use the data to properly create simulations and shed some light on the albedo problems, it wasn’t constructed to answer any Earth environment questions. (I know, we all dislike models, but sometimes they are a good tool for seeing first-order effects and can suggest real-world things to measure.)

It is sensible for them to just present the raw data and leave interpretation to others. I see nothing wrong in that approach.

Mind you,would they have adopted that approach if the results were unfavourable to Svensmark’s hypothesis?

My personal view is that there are enough condensation nuclei in the air anyway so the variations in cosmic ray quantities would not have much if any effect but that won’t be resolved by the CERN experiment.

I think cosmic ray quantities are a good proxy for changes in solar activity levels but the climate effect lies elsewhere in the chemical reactions that occur in the atmosphere when the level of solar activity changes.

To get the observed cloudiness and surface pressure changes that we see in response to solar variability it is necessary to change the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere. Changes in atmospheric chemistry could do that but not changes in cosmic ray quantities.

For the Svensmark hypothesis to gain any ground it needs to explain how changes in cosmic rays could alter the vertical temperature profile.

CERN has been getting some good results from the CLOUD experiment, but is nervous again about whether or not the experiment will continue to be funded. Most people in the know seem to agree that the chances of getting continued government funding in climate research, solar research (and now cosmic ray/atmospheric cloud research!) are greatly increased if a disclaimer is included stating that the current results do not indicate that climate change is caused by anything but mankind. That is why virtually all government-funded-climate-research journal articles contain such a disclaimer. CERN would be happy with a slightly less blatant version of the standard disclaimer, namely “We can’t say whether or not our findings have any relevance to climate change.”

I have no problem with CERN’s position on this at all, just so there is no censoring or fudging of data, which I would certainly not expect from them. In fact this position may have been part of the ground rules for this project from the get-go, and why Svensmark has remained uninvolved.

CERN is extremely shy of dubious science. The place costs a fortune (literally) and they don’t want any ructions which could put them under. Any serious suspicion that they are making stuff up and the place will be shut down.

Their response to the nonsense of Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” was not to ride the publicity, but to point out the major scientific errors.

1. If CERN (which is hardly a monolithic enterprise in the first place) wanted to prevent Svensmark’s theories from being tested, they would have not tested them.

2. Svensmark does not work at CERN. How is he gagged?

3. The rest of the world will be welcome to interpret the findings as they like.

CERN is fully multinational and that means people from very different political backgrounds. They are alike in one respect: they love pure science. They don’t want or need internal political debates about what that science means. They are wise to leave that to outsiders.

CERN has been getting some good results from the CLOUD experiment, but is nervous again about whether or not the experiment will continue to be funded. Most people in the know seem to agree that the chances of getting continued funding in climate research, solar research (and now cosmic ray/atmospheric cloud research!) are greatly increased if a disclaimer is included stating that the current results do not indicate that climate change is caused by anything but mankind. That is why virtually all government-funded-climate-research journal articles contain such a disclaimer. CERN wants a slightly less blatant version of the standard disclaimer, namely “We can’t say whether or not our findings have any relevance to climate change.”

Experiment on the Cause of Real Greenhouses’ Effect – Repeatability of Prof. Robert W. Wood’s experiment

(Article by Nasif S. Nahle)

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS:
The greenhouse effect inside greenhouses is due to the blockage of convective heat transfer with the environment and it is not related, neither obeys, to any kind of “trapped” radiation. Therefore, the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.

The experiment performed by Prof. Robert W. Wood in 1909 is absolutely valid and systematically repeatable.

In average, the blockage of convective heat transfer with the surroundings causes an increase of temperature inside the greenhouses of 10.03 °C with respect to the surroundings temperature.

There could be concerns about panic being induced. Especially if the results point to GCRs and hence clouds as the “MOSFET” that turns on and off the glacials and interglacials. It could be that the actual situation with GCRs and clouds is rather disturbing and there is a desire to avoid panic buying of food, etc.

“”””Switzerland and all other european countries give a lot of money to the CERN. Without this money the CERN is dead.
European and swiss politics are driven by ‘greens’. Media continues to talk about global warming (they still not have evolved in to climate change).”””

————–

Bob the swiss,

You, unfortunately, make sense.

Being American with little European experience, I cannot be critical of your comment.

Calder is utterly wrong. If results are made available without interpretation, the science is preserved intact, and the institution remains exempt from charges of editorializing. All sides may make of the work what they will. Calder’s objection is an embarrassment.

You don’t get new discoveries when you prohibit your researchers from free thinking. Should be obvious, shouldn’t it? As the EU is Bizarro-Land, nobody here will wonder much or ask this question – that journalist surely didn’t. Bloc thinking.

- Svensmark is not the originator of the theory that Cosmic Rays influence cloud formation.
– The idea is not contentious. The theory is popularly accepted even though there is considerable uncertainty about the mechanisms involved.
– Svensmark’s contentious assertion is that Cosmic Rays are dominant in modern warming. This is shown to be false by the data.
– The CLOUD experiment at CERN explores the mechanism that Rays influence cloud formation. It does not asses the scope of influence that Rays may or may not have in modern warming. That is dealt with by comparison of direct measurements of rays and climate data.
– Comparing data for Rays vs climate shows very plainly that correlation between the two breaks down in modern times and affirms that CO2 is currently the primary driver of contemporary warming.

But if some of you guys ~ Calder included ~ want to keep on believing in a great big conspiracy, knock yourselves out.

Calder is utterly wrong. If results are made available without interpretation, the science is preserved intact, and the institution remains exempt from charges of editorializing. All sides may make of the work what they will. Calder’s objection is an embarrassment.
______

But that’s not all that Heuer said. He finished saying “One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of very many parameters.”

And that’s already a spin, an instruction for interpretation in itself.

Check out this presentation by Jasper Kirby. YES, you are right that most everyone agrees that there are already enough atmospheric particles over land to make cosmic ray ionization superfluous to cloud generation – so the hypothesis is really concerned about the effect of cosmic rays on low cloud cover over the oceans (where air is much much cleaner)

This is explained in this presentation, which has only been watched by 1900 people! (a fact that I find shocking) As someone suggested above, everything suggests we are living in an era not so very different from Galileo, a time when preconceived notions dominated over critical thought. In fact, I am starting to apply a healthy dose of cynicism towards everything we currently “accept as givens in the West” – our democracy, our free press, our economic model, our free enterprise, our banking system….etc.

If the scientists doing the research will not be allowed to interpret their results, then fools will rush in where angels fear to tread. First of all, politicians, fools par excellence, will comment and interpret. It’s in their genes, they can’t help themselves. But they will be ignored by all [but] other fools, so who can the layman turn to to find out what the data might mean?

In the interests of democracy, we should all have a vote for who we would like to interpret the results. My vote would go to Rodney, Del Boy’s brother in ‘Only Fools and Horses’, he had an interest in everything ‘cosmic’.

Greg Goodnight said:
“To use an American football metaphor, my take is that Heuer has merely asked his colleagues working on the CLOUD team to refrain from spiking the ball in the endzone and doing a little victory dance to rub it in.”

I’m not supposed to talk about harps that angels don’t play. And I’m not supposed to remind people that dutchsinse.com tells you all you need to know about why angels don’t play these harps.
Why would they level a hill to build a massive reactor array on the beach and store the spent fuel on top and wait for a major tsunami? To play a harp? Oh! Did I misspell harp?

I can’t imagine why Rolf-Dieter Heuer felt he had to speak out about this, as the results will either support Svensmark’s theory on cloud cover changes being caused by GCRs or will refute it – no interpretation is necessary. From what has already been announced, it looks like Svensmark has the results he wanted and his theory has not yet been falsified.

Politics have no place in science and only the truth is important. Observation has proved that the CAGW conjecture is already very shaky and hopefully this will be another nail in the coffin lid.

Meanwhile the sun is still in the doldrums and global temperatures continue to show no statistically significant warming. Make sure you have plenty of fuel stockpiled ready for the coming NH winter.

I think Calder could be reading too much into Heuer’s comments. Heuer says the results will be made clear. Is it really their job to interpret them and to tell us how this impacts the climate. I think it isn’t. That ought be left to the experts in atmospheric sciences and climate.

There could be concerns about panic being induced. Especially if the results point to GCRs and hence clouds as the “MOSFET” that turns on and off the glacials and interglacials. It could be that the actual situation with GCRs and clouds is rather disturbing and there is a desire to avoid panic buying of food, etc.

That has not fazed the media-pseudo-science complex before now … there have been predictions of returning to an ice age and then that we would all burn in the hell fires of damnation if we didn’t cut our carbon footprints … need I remind you?

If the scientists “interpret” the forthcoming scientific results before publication, that will diminish the credibility of the results when they finally are published. Non-commenting on results in press is the best policy.

@burnside
> Calder is utterly wrong. If results are made available without interpretation,
> the science is preserved intact, and the institution remains exempt from
> charges of editorializing.

No, I think you’re wrong. You are conflating ‘interpretation’ with ‘opinion’. Opinions based on subjective feelings are not the same as conclusions drawn from observation or experiment.

There is no science without interpretation. Interpretations are conclusions, predictions and explanations based on observation and experiments. When a climatologist interprets historical data, he is entitled to make predictions like “temperatures in the future will become lower OR stay the same OR get higher etc. They are entitled to make causal judgments, again based on observation or experiment: A causes B but does not cause C unless D etc.

Researchers who don’t interpret their data are just “data loggers”, not scientists.

[soap_box] Perhaps Heuer knows this but is only acting out of desperation, to preserve his funding and existence, a reaction to Lysenkoism on a scale that boggles the imagination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism [/soap_box]

“If CERN (which is hardly a monolithic enterprise in the first place) wanted to prevent Svensmark’s theories from being tested, they would have not tested them.”

Let’s be clear, they did that back in1998 when CLOUD was first put on ice, only to be resurrected when Svensmark’s SKY experiment was successful in 2006 and replicated in CLOUD-06. Give Heuer a break; it’s his job to keep the stokers shoveling money to keep CERN going, and it’s politic to ask the CLOUD collaborators to not rub salt in the wounds of the alarmists (and in the wounds of their patrons in CERN member country legislatures and bureaucracies) in their journal submissions.

On the one hand, I think just giving the data without interpretation is admirable.

On the other hand, I am sick and tired of cowardly scientists who seem to care more about their careers than standing up and being counted when standing up is what is needed. Non-scientists depend on scientists to stand up and be counted when the going gets tough. That is when the rest of the world needs scientific integrity the most, not the least.

This just seems like one of those times when standing up and laying it on the line is what is needed. CERN scientists did the work, CERN has great scientists the world respects, and for CERN authorities to even give the slightest indication that CERN authorities are silencing their scientists or controlling their freedom of expression is quite disturbing to me.

You HAVE to interpret the results of an experiment.
Does the results of the experiment support the hypothesis that the experiment was set up to test.

It is basic science; the person/team that does the experiment interpret the result. Other scientists can then apply the hypothesis under test; replicate the experiment and INTERPRET the results of THEIR experiment.

It isn’t damn well science if the experimenter does not interpret the results.

The CLOUD experiment (as I understand it) is to validate the hypothesis that Cosmic Rays in certain energy levels DO create nucleation particles.

The results that have already leaked out have already confirmed that part of the experiment.

Do CR provide SUFFICIENT nucleation particles to cause clouds to form ? This is the part that requires interpretation. From a model (albeit a physical model rather than a computer model) we then could/can/will extrapolate to real world conditions.

The problem here is perhaps a mis-understanding of who means what by ‘interpret’.

Interpretation – science talk : x = y therefore if by experiment we can show that x happens; then y happens.
Interpretation – political style x (may) = y therefore z;q and famine and flooding and drought and the end of the world.

The Head of CERN will be talking POLITICALLY – unfortunately he is talking to scientists who will perhaps mis-understand and assume he is talking scientifically.

The one is of course correct – it is exactly what the CAGW scam is based on. No interpretation is good.

As an engineer I find the request not to interpret the results to be perverse and anti-science. But than I find the CAGW position perverse and anti-science for that very reason

Since CERN is only studying how Y is affected by X, they’d prefer not to get into how much X (cosmic radiation) varies, or how much Z (global temperature) is affected by Y (clouds). The instructions to stay within the scope of the experiment sound like good science to me.

The view that CERN Director-General Heuer expressed is SUPPOSED to be the normal, default, goes-without-saying scientific stance. That he felt obligated to say it anyway speaks volumes about modern politicized government-funded science.

Yes, I realize the phrase “politicized government-funded’ is redundant.

I also suspect the phrase “government-funded science” is something of an oxymoron.

Just one by-the-way clarification: AGW is not the greatest scandal and fraud ever to be perpetrated “in the name of science”. That dishonour belongs to Lyssenkoism, which after all caused thousands of scientists to die in the GULag. It is just the greatest fraud to be launched in the free world, by scientists not enslaved to the beck and favour of a tyranny. Morally, that makes it worse.

The question must be asked – to what extent does extensive stratocumulus cover over the North Pacific during Summer affect the global pattern.

The latest runs depict a robust cold front coming down from the Bering Sea on Saturday, giving the Pacific High a pretty good whack. Perhaps the storm door will open and the rainy season will start – earrrrrrrrliest everrrrrr.

I agree with some others – I think CERN may actually be doing the right thing. As long as they publish the data there are plenty of smart people who can lend it an interpretation.

If they get mixed up in the ridiculously non-subjective politics of AGW they will lose no matter what. If they come across as being deniers, they could lose funding – and that would impact the ability to perform good science. If they try to put an unwarranted AGW spin on it (which I imagine many of them would) they lose all credibility with other people of science (as opposed to people of spin).

Folks all over the world need to get their ducks in line and their bunkers
prepared for the fallout from the CLOUD results from CERN.

The credibility of Piers Corbyn of weatheraction.com, Chris Folland at the
UK Met Office, Professor Terry Sloan of Lancaster University, Jon Egill
Kristjansson at the University of Oslo, Jim Hansen, Ray Bradley of the
University of Massachusetts (and Mike Mann’s old boss), Ari Jokimaki at
SkepticalScience.com, A.S. Erlykin in the Department of Physics at
Durham University, and a host of others who, through their writings
and specially created “studies”, managed to dump on Svensmark and
his theory over the past eight years.

We can expect a lot of sleight of hand waving and twisted pretzel logic
over the next few weeks peoving just how unimportant this subject is
in the way things are? to climate change.

With Mike Mann’s University of Virginia e-mails due to surface in
August or September, it promises to be a very warm fall.

Kevin Trenberth thought it perfectly acceptable to hold a news conference touting all the AGW tripe about hurricanes despite it having zero evidence, leading to the resignation of Chris Landsea. The list is long for similar examples. Every “knee jerk” AGW proclamation no matter how weak gets public exposure and front page reporting by the water-boys-for-AGW journals.

Who can forget the Holy Pronouncement from Mike Lockwood at his press conference just before that U.N.(?) meeting; the “final nail in the coffin” meme.

[23] The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor
feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhouse gas
emissions over the next century are virtually guaranteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative, and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere in our climate system.

After comments from anna v and John Day, the realization came to me, though it should have been obvious. CERN is a bunch of Physicists. After someone gets a PhD in one field although they know that field intimately, that’s no assurance that they have more than a high school education in any other field.

What the Director is saying is: “You guys know physics, describe what you saw in the physics experiment and leave the climatology to those who study climatology.”

In October 2009 Rasmus at Realclimate was calling for an end to Svensmark’s funding…

Here is the comment I left then:

6. Antonio San says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
9 October 2009 at 1:16 PM
Meanwhile Willard Boyle, 2009 Physics Nobel Prize winner -a scientific award, not the political one…- described his days as a researcher for Bell labs, as the most exciting of his life… What is needed is “an appreciation for the free will, free spirit of scientists. Give them a chance to do the things they want to do.”
So Rasmus, who and in under what competence is to decide what Svenmark and/or others should research or not? You? How convenient!

– Comparing data for Rays vs climate shows very plainly that correlation between the two breaks down in modern times and affirms that CO2 is currently the primary driver of contemporary warming.

Intriguing. Are you admitting that their previously was a correlation?

So if there was a correlation in the past — there must have been a physical mechanism. And why would that mechanism no longer operate now because there is more CO2 in the air?

I would suggest that if there was previously a relationship that there must still be a relationship, even if hard to detect under other modern influences, and that no study of climate is correct which ignores is.

I strongly second this! I saw this last year, and it utterly destroys AGW (IMHO) without trying. It covers climate change in the pre-industrial period, and looks at sunspots, sea levels, etc. Even mentions the Livingston & Penn sunspot paper, where he questions why it was rejected (must have offended someone). Very comprehensive. Eventually he actually gets to the CLOUD experiment.

It is about an hour long so grab some popcorn. Bring the kids and grandma.

One indication whether a hypothesis is correct is the hypothesis’ ability to explain paradoxes that lack an explanation. An example is the faint sun paradox ( how to explain the fact that the earth’s oceans where not frozen as the early sun was roughly 30% less luminous than the sun is at this time.) or explaining why the earth entered ice house periods repeatedly when atmospheric CO2 has high.

Shiva (See my link above to the papers that provides an explanation for the faint sun paradox (The stellar wind is roughly 3 to 4 times faster for young stars. The faster solar wind reduces the magnitude and number of GCR that strike the earth’s atmosphere which in turn result in less planetary clouds.) and forcing function that coincides with the timing of the occurrence of the ice house periods. Every ice house period coincides with high galactic cosmic ray periods as the solar system passes through the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy).

Svensmark’s following paper provides an explanation for what is called the polar see-saw. The Greenland ice cools when the Antarctic ice sheet warms and visa versa. Svensmark explanation is the solar cycle modulates GCR on a millinium basis which explains the Little Ice Age and the Medievalle warm period. The affect of changing low level cloud cover is different for the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is isolated by the polar vortex from the sounding ocean. The albedo of the Antarctic ice sheet is sufficiently high that an increase in low level cloud cover result in warming as the increased greenhouse warming of the water in the clouds more than off sets the radiation that is reflected up into space from the increase in low level clouds. Svensmark shows that that cyclic temperature changes occurs on both the Greenland Ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet and notes there is no time lag in the cycle. The alternative hypothesis is that a see-saw in the ocean conveyor is the cause of the observation. However the ocean conveyor has a theoretical delay roughly a thousand years from pole to pole. In addition recent detailed measurements of ocean currents has found that there is no ocean conveyor. The ocean currents do not move a single conveyor which completely invalidates Wally Broeker’s hypothesis which was a wild ass guess rather than hypothesis based on direct observation.

The Antarctic climate anomaly (my comment: Polar see-saw) and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygen-isotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.

Evidence has accumulated in recent years that the influx of galactic cosmic rays, as modulated by solar magnetic activity, influences the Earth’s temperature by varying the cloudiness at low altitudes [1, 2, 3]. Electrons liberated by muons help to make the cloud condensation nuclei on which water droplets form [4]. There is now no reason to doubt that the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a natural cloud chamber that registers the passing muons. What remains to be demonstrated is that the resulting clouds affect the climate, and that is the purpose of this paper.

Clouds warm the underlying surface by trapping the outgoing long-wave radiation, and cool it by reflecting the short-wave radiation from the Sun. In general the cooling effect is greater than the heating effect, resulting in a net cooling of the Earth of the order of 15 W/m2. A small percentage change in cloud cover can therefore result in significant forcing.

The cooling effect is not evenly distributed. As shown in Fig. (2 a) it is minimal around the Equator and increases towards the mid-latitudes. In polar regions the clouds can have a warming effect if their re-radiation of long-wave energy downwards dominates over the loss of short-wave solar energy blocked by the clouds. This warming has been well recorded on the surface in both the Arctic and Antarctic [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

CERN’s main funding comes from the member countries in pre signed contracts as a percentage of the GDP of each country. For the next few years no extra funding will be sought, as happened for building the LHC, so the political correctness of the DG is just that, and shows his acumen in physics and sophistication in scientific policy (NOT).

There are more than ten groups in the experiment, from all over the world , and though the spokesman Kirkby comes from the CERN group and is an employee, and may have to tow the line if it becomes formal in CERN, the collaboration as a whole decides on publications and most of the groups in CLOUD are climate groups, so they can interpret.

This was an unfortunate statement , if true, from a man who seems not to know how the high energy physics community publishes!!! And possibly not even how it is governed.

Ulrich Elkmann says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Just one by-the-way clarification: AGW is not the greatest scandal and fraud ever to be perpetrated “in the name of science”. That dishonour belongs to Lyssenkoism, which after all caused thousands of scientists to die in the GULag. It is just the greatest fraud to be launched in the free world, by scientists not enslaved to the beck and favour of a tyranny. Morally, that makes it worse.
*********

Sorry but Lyssenkoism was not a fraud. Today it goes by the name of epigenetics. It also has been proven time and again. (actually the Darwinian Theory used as it’s proof the variation in finch beaks, which is now believed to be a result of rapid epigenetic changes rather than genetic mutations)

The problem was that politics entered the picture and corrupted the interpretation. In the Soviet Bloc the evidence corroborated Maxist Theories so anything else was Thoughtcrime. In the West, to do research into the science behind his theories was a political crime. So all that was taught (and researched) was Darwinism.

It was only after several generations had passed that Western biologists could investigate the theories without losing their academic positions. The result was spectacular, and had to be renamed to avoid refusal to publish. A biological trait can be acquired and handed down though a hundred generations. But change the environment and the trait disappears. All because of methylation on the chromosomes.

Nikola Tesla wrote in 1931
” My theory was strikingly confirmed when I found that the sun does, indeed, emit a ray marvelous in the inconceivable minuteness of its particles and transcending speed of their motion, vastly exceeding that of light. This ray, by impinging against the cosmic dust generates a secondary radiation, relatively very feeble but fairly penetrative, the intensity of which is, of course, almost the same in all directions.”

It is now rumoured that scientists have discovered such a ray and have found that it is changing the decay rates of radioactive materials, which were thought to be constants. If this is true we would have to change everything to do with radioactivity, and we could not use their decay rates as constants in physics!

OT…it would be SO helpful if comments were numbered so that you could read an exact number (say 50) and then come back later. i know they are timestamped, but that just isn’t as easy to remember as leaving off at a particular time would be.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer “One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” He’s being economical with the truth. The CERN results are likely to be one huge parameter.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer also uses the phrase “highly political arena of the climate change debate”, a statement that seemingly ignores the CAGW mantra that there is NO debate, because the Science is Settled!

All in all, I suspect that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer is going to regret his ill-advised words.

I think a few people (Calder included) are reading more into this than is necessary.

One of the first things I was told as a researcher is that there is no such thing as bad data, just incorrect interpretation.

As such, it is essential that the data obtained in an experiment is reproduced as accurately and as ‘raw’ as possible (i.e. only really subject to quality control checks and corrections relating to instrumental drift or similar experiment-related inaccuracies).

CERN was the facility where the experiment was undertaken, but it was not their experiment. As such they should be avoiding interpretation of the results as far as possible (at least until the CLOUD team have had the opportunity to evaluate and interpret THEIR data).

G. E. Pease says:
July 18, 2011 at 1:30 pm
…
CERN would be happy with a slightly less blatant version of the standard disclaimer, namely “We can’tdaren’t say whether or not our findings have any relevance to climate change.”

Just one by-the-way clarification: AGW is not the greatest scandal and fraud ever to be perpetrated “in the name of science”. That dishonour belongs to Lyssenkoism, which after all caused thousands of scientists to die in the GULag.

Actually, AGW in its by-blows, the deflection of agriculture into biofuels, and its crimp on energy development in poor countries, is likely responsible for 10s or 100s of millions of “excess deaths”. Increases of food and fuel poverty for those hovering on the brink is deadly.

But it’s OK, because it’s just part of the necessary culling of “the surplus population”, as Dickens’ Scrooge put it. In about 1875.

I understandthat that CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer takes the stance he does because he has to protect the government funding, after all that is his primary job. However, several commenters on this blog seem to think that it is BAD science to infer what the results mean in the discussion section of a research paper. If that’s the case, then I suppose then that these very same people must conclude that Mann, Trenberth, Phil and all the other main AGW scientists are doing bad science because they don’t refrain from drawing conclusions in the discussion section of their papers?

Sometimes WUWT is on the money sometimes it’s not … this is a not case.

Perhaps some of you might hit the studies on the subject and find out what happened in 2009.
Lets see if I can give you a few hints try wikipedia and perhaps go to the very bottom of the page and read the last entries. Next try cosmic ray and something big happened in 2009/2010 … try actually reading and doing some study. You may want to then cruise over to icecube nuetrino observatory which WUWT actually mentioned but really missed the whole point and actually read around.

CERN doesn’t allow publication on Flat Earth or any other theories based on defunct and disproved ideas either. The problem with the whole cloud seed reporting is it is based on defunct models proven to be wrong not through any fault of the groups involved the physics they relied on was fundementally wrong, no conspiracy not because the groups wanted to mislead it was just plain wrong.

The stand has been taken until the fundemental models are fixed which should occur with data from AMS-2 and the LHC reports all they are doing is adding confusion into the debate.

There is a effect no one will deny but to publish papers on climate science while the fundementals are in dispute is just crazy and hence the temporary blocks on publications.

GOING INTO NEXT WEEK BOTH OPERATIONAL RUNS OF THE GFS AND ECMWF DROP A SYSTEM DOWN FROM THE NORTH AND HAVE IT NEAR OUR CWA MONDAY/TUESDAY. ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT FORECAST TO HAVE ANY MOISTURE TO DEAL WITH ITS VERY COOL NATURE (IT IS CURRENTLY JUST WEST OF THE ALEUTIANS) IS REMARKABLE FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR.

====================

This is the Monterey CWA. It is supposed to be high summer right now. However, it appears Fall is already knocking on the door.

Now manmade electromagnetic fields from power generators and electricity transmission lines is affecting cloud formation, leading to EVEN MORE WARMING, suffering and tragedy. Of course this means that we need to stop all electricity usage immediately, especially things that broadcast, such as radio, television and cell phones. This is just another example of how mankind is destroying the planet. The United Nations needs to assume control of all broadcasting, clearly. We can limit broadcast signals to only those found appropriate under UN guidelines. It’s for your own good. Oh, and it’ll create millions of green jobs too, of course.

Kidding of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised to read something like that from Gavin.

ferd berple says:
July 19, 2011 at 6:41 am
anna v says:
July 18, 2011 at 10:53 am
… I can assure you that the Director General of CERN has no control on what the groups publish in any way.

Then why would the Director make such a statement?

He expresses his wishes, and he might prevail on a direct employee of CERN, though I have never heard of such censoring having happened. Psychological pressure for grade advancement etc might play a role on making his wishes known. But the CERN group is one of over ten groups, many of them climate meteorology and environment departments and he cannot have any say there.

LdB says:
July 19, 2011 at 8:24 am

CERN doesn’t allow publication on Flat Earth or any other theories based on defunct and disproved ideas either.
That is not the way HEP research works. I have never seen “allowed and not allowed” lists for CERN preprints and yellow reports,which are the only CERN publications. There are editorial boards and committees that would approve a submission for a CERN preprint , but the DG is not involved in that.

Research results go the way of the usual submission to a peer reviewed appropriate journal, and the DG again has absolutely no say there and the non CERN groups cannot be censored..

You do not know what your are talking about.Stark says:
July 19, 2011 at 2:39 am

Anna V. From your inside experience, what would you say the impact of going against the DG’s guidance would to to researchers’ prospects of future projects at CERN ?

If expressed orally very little influence on submission of proposals to the SPSC and approval of them . If a written directive is sent out I suppose the usual promotion of employees of CERN might be influenced and then also the committees approving the experiments. BUT if something like that, written directive censoring, happened there would be great unrest and upheaval in the HEP community and it would probably be revoked. Herding physicists is like herding cats.

There are many comments here about whether or not the comments by the Director of CERN are good or bad for science or whether this is CERN policy or not, but I think this critical issue here is WHY he felt it necessary to make such a comment in the interview. I appreciate the point that CERN simply provide the facilities for various studies and that they don’t want to get tangled up in the politics (not to mention the horrendous over-interpretation of almost everything to do with climate change), but why should this specific topic merit such a specific statement?

Is there pressure on CERN to toe the line on CAGW, such that the Director feels the need to pre-empt any interpretation by the scientists? Is he thinking or expecting that core CERN funding will be affected? is he – actually – positioning the organization to avoid any blame if/when the IPCC concensus collapses? Since particle physics is not my area i do not know if such a statement has been made before, or if the specific nature of the advice is common in CERN – perhaps other with more experience can comment on that aspect.

As for castigating Nigel Calder for somewhat embellishing this “advice” in to a gagging order – get a grip. He is a journalist and a journalist’s job is to get you to read the article, what he has done is pose a question not make a statement and shooting the messenger simply shows that people are not prepared to consider the content of the message.

“””John, you are one of the people old PT Barnum talked about coming along every minute- Suckers, if you forgot the word! Cynicism indeed! If you can’t tell black from white go see an eye doctor!”””

——

davidg,

Appreciate you commenting.

Fun and games at the blogs is the norm and debate/argument is quite stimulating. A lot of learning too. I think we all benefit no matter what side of any debate one is on.

I have found skepticism a rational position offering healthy discourse. BUT NOT SO WITH CYNICISM. It seems of little value except to hint at something in some pejorative sense about something/someone in an discussion..

I am sometimes in automatic cynical comment mode. I should not do that so often.

As far as the budget of CERN goes it is decided with the treaty of the member states at a high political level as a percentage of the GDP of each country. In the next few years no new money will be requested, as happened with the LHC, certainly not within in the contract time of this DG (5years -.2 since his appointment). It probably reflects his ignorance on matters of climate except at a political level.

Well I found anna v’s input to be most relevent.
So evidently CERN facilities were used by (who knows who) to do the CLOUD experiments; and possibly because of the intense lay public interest, the Director simply “wished” that Cern folks refrain from interpreting, what apparently non-CERN personnel did and recorded.

The rest of us can interpret to our heart’s content, once we find out what the data is.

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists
April 20th, 2010
“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.

How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.”

Hansen’s “Positive feedbacks predominate” comment is one of the less intelligent things I have heard from the GW community. If positive feedbacks dominated, then we’d all be smoking lumps of carbon. Positive feedbacks result in outputs increasing exponentially.

People who describe the Earth’s climate in terms of feedback control systems don’t, for the most part, appear to understand feedback control systems. And don’t get me started on “forcings” (which are nothing of the kind).

“Intriguing. Are you admitting that their previously was a correlation?” – Mooloo

Yes. A strong one. This isn’t controversial. Neither is the idea that Cosmic Rays may have been a significant driver of some past climate changes. What is very controversial is the idea that Rays are driving contemporary warming, it’s controversial because we have the data and the data doesn’t show that.

There’s doesn’t have to be a physical mechanism, it might just be coincidence. But because the correlation is strong it suggests that it’s worth investigating – hence the CLOUD project. If the CLOUD project reveals a physical mechanism then that’s a good thing because it helps sure up our understanding of the multi-faceted beast that is climate. But it doesn’t alter the fact that climate and cosmic rays have been heading off in opposite directions for several decades now. That’s because something else is currently at the reigns.

“I would suggest that if there was previously a relationship that there must still be a relationship, even if hard to detect under other modern influences, and that no study of climate is correct which ignores it [cosmic rays].” – Mooloo

That all depends on your definition of correct.

Classical mechanics isn’t as complete a study as Relativity – but it does the job. And folks who know don’t think relativity is the whole story either. But I don’t think a lot of them will complain if you use it.

But you’re right. There’s certainly no harm in knowing and no harm factoring as much as we know into climate models.

Climate models clearly aren’t complete (to be fair, the rhyme and reason of a model in science is to be a useful simplification). The question is, are they useful tools for helping us understand the Climate – and the answer to that, as limited as they are, has to be a resounding yes.

Good way to discourage any further research into areas that might disprove AGM theories: You can’t make any conclusions or predictions based on your own research, leaving such fame-producing statements for others to make, stealing from you the recognition and professional standing you deserve.

“Wait a minute. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I’ve been wrong to blindly follow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method”. Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance!…Naaaaaahhh!” — Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber

This is why we had a ‘cold war’ for about 50 years. Bad translations and misinterpretations of them.
As I see it, the general meaning was: tell the results in plain language without any additional comments that could be misleading and/or forcing a scientific/political war.
That’s it!

Why are the scientists ever allowed to interpret results of their studies? Aren’t they the most biased when it comes to their own results? Researchers should only submit their methods and results, leaving it to their peers in the filed to interpret and to debate.

The Nunn report, in addition to outlining Aum’s large international membership and massive finances of over US$1 billion, also revealed the cult’s fascination for Tesla weapons.

The Senate report describes Aum’s visits to the New York based International Tesla Society (ITS), where they sought to obtain a number of his books, patents and papers. However, they must have been at least a little disappointed in what they were allowed to access, as we shall see.

A representative of the ITS told Senate investigators that Aum’s interest focused on Tesla’s experiments with “resonating frequencies,” in connection with artificially “creating earthquakes.” Significantly, the report also states that Tesla claimed “…with his technology he could ’split the world’ in two.”

This astonishing assertion closely parallels remarks made by Soviet Premier Krushchev to the Presidium in 1960, where he referred to “…the advent of a new class of Soviet Superweapon, so powerful it could wipe out all life on earth if unrestrainedly used.” 4 The comment, made at the height of the cold war, clearly did not refer to nuclear weapons – already an integral component of the feared Soviet arsenal.

Not least, the Senate report mentions Tesla’s development of a “ray gun in the 1930’s, which was actually a particle beam accelerator,” and which was said to be able to “shoot down an airplane at 200 miles.” 5 Following Tesla’s death in 1943, the US government seized his papers and research notes, placing them under national security lock and key.

In addition to visiting New York’s ITS, Aum personnel also traveled to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Their studies here included researching the so called “Tesla Coil” (below image) – a device used for alternating currents.

Note that Dr. Heuer said this in an interview to be carried by the international press. If he merely wished to communicate these views to the the scientists writing the paper(s) on the CLOUD experiment results, he could have done so privately via email. That would have bothered me a lot!

His message was clearly designed for public consumption. To whom was it directed? I can only speculate, but it seems plausible that this statement was directed to the politicians that lead the countries that fund CERN – politicians who are mostly publicly heavily invested in AGW. I think that Dr. Heuer was telling them that CERN will avoid becoming involved in the AGW morass, other than as a provider of basic physics data on cloud nucleation. In other words, ‘Please don’t shoot the messenger – CERN is not a combatant.’ I can’t say that I blame him for his caution.

As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more that science is funded by governments with agendas that go beyond the pursuit of truth (often par for the course), the more science will tend to be corrupted.

No matter. Does this lab chief believe his own physicists are the only ones capable of interpreting these results? If not, then he has just surrendered the lab’s ownership of what may be one of the most paradigm-shattering discoveries of the decade, one that ends or significantly contributes to a globally important policy debate. He should not be in charge of a lab if he routinely engages in such professionally stifling activity that is the very opposite of being in the interests of the lab and its reputation.